Levent Baştürk: Thank you for accepting our interview request. Personally I know you from your writings, from your magazine. But your magazine Tikkun is not very well known in Turkey. Would you start this interview by introducing your magazine, and also giving us some information about yourself?

Michael Lerner: Tikkun is a Hebrew word. And it means to repair, to heal and transform. And the Hebrew concept was that the task of human beings is to be God’s partner in transforming the world, and building a world of peace, of kindness and generosity. So Tikkun was a magazine created with the goal of helping the project of transforming the world. We started with two main foci. One focus was to challenge the lack of, or what we call religio-phobia in the left. Because in the United States, and this is true of most of western Europe as well, the progressive forces are irrationally anti-religious or spiritual consciousness, and we believe that that’s a big mistake. Because number one, if you want to make a democratic transformation in the United States, the vast majority of Americans are religious. 80 percent claim to believe in God, 60 percent claim to go to church once a month. So you can’t build a majority transformation in America without speaking to the religious issue.

But second we believe it was a mistake, because the mainstream ideology is that all that counts is economics, all that people care about is money. And this is one of the things that makes it difficult to develop solidarity, if they think that everyone else is just out for their own money and that’s all they care about. We think that the left progressive movement has to challenge that, and recognize that human beings have other needs besides material needs. And so we think it’s a big mistake for the left to talk as though, in the slogan that was adopted by the Democrats in the 1990’s, “it’s the economy stupid,” that’s all that counts. That’s not true. Because of that, the left is unable to speak to a very large section of people who are right wing politically. The left says that they’re all that because they hate Blacks, they hate minorities, or they hate foreigners, or they’re stupid. But I know, because I was a psychologist who did a study about the psychodynamics of society, did that study for the National Institute of Mental Health.

In the United States, I learned that a large percentage of the right in America, of the right wing in America, are people who actually agree with the left on many issues, but they feel the contempt of the left for something very important to them. So the left is driving people away by acting as though, if your religious, you are at a lower level of intelligence, or you have psychological deformation and you need to develop psychologically to a higher level. So that was one reason. So the second reason we set up Tikkun was to challenge, in the Jewish world, the wide support for the state of Israel in particular. We who set up Tikkun support Israel, want Israel to be strong. And we believe that the only way for Israel to become strong is for Israel to become known as the most generous country in the Middle East, not the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East. And that generosity has to start with the Palestinian people. We have to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, we have to help the Palestinian people develop an economically strong and politically strong state. And we believe that would be in Israel’s best interests.

Over the course of the years, we’ve also developed a sense that we should not make that argument only for what’s Israel’s best interests, because we also believe in the equal humanity of every human being on the planet, and the equal value. Or in religious terms we say that every individual is created in the image of God. That’s why the Bible does not start by saying that God created the Jewish people. It starts by saying God created people, Adam. Adam in Hebrew means “from the earth,” adamah. So that means we all come from the same family, we all are equally created in God’s image because it says in the Bible. So we believe that the Palestinian people, even if it were not the best interest of Israel, it still would be the right thing to do. Because the Palestinian people have the same rights, and the same dignity, and are equally valuable to the Jewish people, or any other people on the planet. And so it offends us to see Palestinians being treated in an unequal and unfair way by the state of Israel.

And that doesn’t mean we don’t support Israel, we do support Israel but we don’t support its policies toward Palestinians. And that’s just like how many of us in the progressive world feel the same way about the United States. We love the United States, but we don’t support its policies, the Iraq War, we oppose the Vietnam War, we oppose the Iraq war, we oppose the Afghanistan war. So that doesn’t mean we don’t love the United States. We do, we just think that some of its policies are crazy or destructive or immoral policies. So Tikkun is both a voice in the progressive world trying to legitimate a spiritual consciousness and challenge a purely economic reductionist materialist worldview. And in the Jewish world it exists to challenge the blind support for the policies of the state of Israel, and instead to challenge that, to say that Israel has to live according to Jewish values. To be strong is to be strong by serving God in the right way, and they’re not serving God in the right way. Instead they’re making Judaism look like an oppressive religion, which it never was.

L.B.:I want to come back to the issue of Palestine and the Arab Spring later on, but the Turkish people don’t know much about the religious spectrum in the United States— that’s why I want to ask one more question. Will you explain to us the position of Tikkun vis-a-vis the left progressive movement in religion? Among the Christians also there’s a similar movement, one of its spokespersons is Jim Wallis. Can you also say something about them too?

M.L.: Tikkun is not just for Jews. In fact many of our writers, many of our readers are Christians or Muslims in the United States. Inside the Christian world, first of all, there are the Catholics, and there are the Protestants. The Catholics are, by and large, very progressive on social justice issues on most issues. But when it comes to women’s rights, they have not been very progressive because the Pope in Italy has taken a strong stance against the right of women to have control over their own sexuality. So that’s fine’ they’re entitled to their own religious beliefs. But the problem is that they then say this is the critical issue, and you should vote on this issue, you should only support candidates who agree with you on this issue. Well if you look at the New Testament, there’s nothing in the New Testament about being anti-abortion. Jesus wasn’t about that, Jesus was about loving your neighbor, he was about caring for the poor, etc. So they’ve distorted the priority, and the same thing has happened in the Protestant world.

So along comes a small group now of progressives in the Christian world, who are just like us in the Jewish world. And Jim Wallis and his movement, called Sojourners, has been the articulator of that alternative in the Christian world. So we are allies with him, and he’s allies with us in trying in all worlds to say that the main issue is how do you treat other human beings? Are you caring for other people? Are you acting in a generous way toward other people? And are you acting in a way that promotes peace and justice and love? We wish that there was some movement like that in the Islamic world in the United States. But Muslims in the United States, particularly after 9/11 and the attack, are so scared, under so much pressure and fear that they will be attacked, that they’re not yet in a position to challenge whatever needs to be challenged inside their own religion. They’re much more just trying to make sure they don’t get physically attacked in the United States. But eventually I hope there will develop, but there are such people. Hamza Yusuf is one, challenging, presenting new interpretations of Islam, Tariq Ramadan in England is also doing that, so there’s the beginning of that kind of movement in the Islamic world as well.

L.B.:You also approach Obama’s presidency in the light of what you’ve told us so far. In that sense, you don’t see Obama’s personality. You are critical about his term because you don’t approve of his policies just because he’s a Black president, but you just approach his term in terms of the policies. What do you see there when you look from that angle?

M.L.: First of all let me say that I was one of the public endorsers of Obama for the election.

L.B: Let me interrupt you and ask are you still endorsing him for this election too?

M.L.: No I’m not endorsing him. I hope he wins but he’s not going to have my energy behind him, and he’s not going to have the energy of a lot of people who made him win last time. Because Obama, after being elected, really went very far away from what he was telling us. And I know him personally, I sat with him, he’s read my books, he reads Tikkun— or at least he used to read Tikkun all the time. In fact Tikkun had a conference in 1996 in Chicago, he came and asked if he could speak at our conference. We said yes sure, and he was a great speaker. But he went very far away from where he was when he was running for president. When he was running for president, he sounded like he was a real peacemaker and somebody who cared about social justice, but as soon as he got elected, he accepted the framework of Wall Street and the wealthy. Instead of punishing the banks that had hurt so badly the American economy because of their selfishness, and their making unfair loans and then throwing people out of their homes. Millions of people have lost their homes in the United States because of the lending policies. And we expected the president to at least declare a freeze on the expulsion of people from their homes, and then to force the banks to renegotiate the loans to a lower level of interest, so that the people could afford to pay it. Because what happened was the banks gave the people variable interest rates, so you start out, you sign something that says 3%, you sign that, but in the small print it says that the banks can raise it to any level. And that’s what they did. They raised it to a level where most people could not afford to pay and then they throw them out of their homes. That was one issue.

L.B.:Foreign policy?

M.L.: We expected him to stand up to Netanyahu, but instead he followed Netanyahu and did whatever Netanyahu said was right, and that was very bad for someone’ like me who wants Israel to be secure. I know that Israel’s security can only come through peace with Palestinians. And Obama didn’t do that. But worse than that, then he also decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan. We thought he was going to end the wars. That’s what he was running on when he ran, that he was going to be a peacemaker. He said that he opposed the war in Iraq, he made that a major point. But when he got in, instead of ending the war, he extended it for three years. He should have ended it right away.

L.B: And Guantanamo Bay

M.L.: He promised to close Guantanamo Bay. The Congress didn’t want him to do it. He’s the Commander-in-Chief. He had the power to do it if he wanted. At the very least he could have said, within the situation he was facing, well the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay stay in Guantanamo Bay, but not as prisoners.

L.B.: There are also some reports that the operation of American Special Forces right now, they are operating now in 120 different countries.

M.L.:He became a total militarist in support of the military, and he was the one who advanced this idea of using drones to attack selected targets, but that ended up killing a lot of innocent people in Pakistan, in Afghanistan. So he ended up not being a man of peace. He accepted the worldview. It wasn’t just that he followed what the military told him, it’s that he even defended their worldview, and started talking as if the world is so scary. He gave a great speech in Egypt but then he didn’t follow through with that.

L.B.: But is it because of the way the American political system is structured? Or the economic system? You run a presidential campaign that costs you a lot of money, you accept a lot of donations from a lot of different segments, and you owe them something.

M.L.: Well you do, but you don’t. In other words, you’re President of the United States, you’re the most powerful person on the planet. If you say to yourself “ok I’m going to be president for four years, I’m not going to run for re-election, I’m going to do what’s right,” he doesn’t need the money while he’s president, he needs it if he’s going to rerun four years later. Then he needs their support. But when he’s president, he’s got the presidency.

So it’s a matter of principle what you are going to choose. Are you going to choose to make sure that you’re going to please the 1% of the population that owns 40% of the wealth of American society? Or are you going to choose to deal with the other 99% and their needs?And he chose the 1%, he didn’t have to choose that. He could have chosen to say “I’m going to be a populist, I’m going to support the interests of the majority of Americans, I’m going to fight for their interests. If I lose in the Congress, I’m still going to say this is wrong and what the powerful are doing is wrong. I’m not going to play up to them, and then we’ll see.” And I believe that if he had done that, he would have overwhelming support. There wouldn’t be a close election, and he wouldn’t need all the money because he would have built up so much love from the population. Instead he played up to the interests of the rich and the powerful, and so most of the population thinks “well he’s better than the other guy, but only a little bit better than the other guy.”

L.B.:What about his position on the Arab Spring? Do you think it was just a party approach? Or he has a principled approach regarding the Arab Spring?

M.L.: I think he did not come out in favor of the Arab Spring until there was nothing else he could do. He could have immediately endorsed the struggle against Mubarak. He could have immediately supported the struggle in other countries. He didn’t, he waffled, he held back a great deal. So he wasn’t courageous there, he hasn’t been courageous hardly any place in his foreign policy. Again he’s better than the more reactionary ones, the Republicans, so I hope he wins. But for me the ultimate thing is that he then signed the bill that allows the US to put in prison without trial people—

L.B.: The NDAA?

M.L.: Exactly the NDAA, and forever. No trial and they can be there for the rest of their lives. Now this is a total violation of what the United States was founded on. The Bill of Rights says that you have the right to a speedy trial. So to sign a statement that was totally in violation. And he was a law professor, he knew the difference, but he was doing everything to play up to the most reactionary militarist elements in American society. And when he signed that, I said no way am I going to support this guy again, that was it that for me, the final straw.

But also he did very little for the environment. He didn’t help people understand that this world is facing a huge environmental crisis. And that one of the reasons why we have to stop playing to America’s interests, and start looking at the world’s interests, is because in the 21st century the world is not going to survive unless every American comes to realize that our wellbeing as Americans depends on the wellbeing of every other person on the planet, and of the planet also. And instead he gives this speech about education so that we can be number one in the world. Why should we be number one in the world? We should care about the wellbeing of everyone in the world. Not just of Americans. But it’s always framed in terms of America must be number one. Well then what about number fifteen? Who’s number thirty? We should not care about their wellbeing? We should be caring about everyone’s wellbeing and we sound be talking in a language that reflects the wellbeing of everyone on the planet. So Obama, not just in his deeds but in his words, was reinforcing American chauvinism, America first, America the most important. And that is not what the world needs in the 21st century. We need to overcome the extreme nationalism, and to help people develop a sense of global solidarity with each other, and global solidarity with the earth itself.

L.B.:Actually the Arab Spring was an opportunity?

M.L.: And they blew it.

L.B.:What’s your view, how do you look at the Arab Spring in general? With its ups and downs?

M.L.: I’m still happy, I believe that any democratization any place in the world is a good thing. I live in a democracy and people make stupid choices. That’s the cost of democracy, sometimes people make stupid choices. But democracy allows people to make a stupid choice and later on realize they’ve made a stupid choice, and change their minds. That’s a great thing that democracy allows that a dictatorship does not allow. So I think it’s great that the Arab Spring has happened. And I’m really happy that it happened, and I believe it’s in the best interest of the world for all those countries to be democratic, for the whole world to be democratic.

L.B.:There are views that the Arab Spring, if it really achieves its goal, if the Arab Springs ends up as a successful experiment for the region, it’s going to isolate Israel more than ever. And also some are saying that’s going to pose a threat to Israel. Do you agree with this opinion?

M.L.: I don’t. Lets put it this way, that could happen if Israel does not change its policies. I don’t think it will happen if Israel turned around and acted in a generous way towards, number one the Palestinian people, and number two other countries in the Middle East, and acted with a sprit of generosity. But if Israel continues with its current policies, then it might be very dangerous for Israel. But the solution is not to say therefore we should not support democracy in the Arab world. The conclusion is therefore we should change Israeli policy so that it’s much more friendly to the needs of the Arab people of the Middle East.

L.B.: Can you make a comment on the Arab Spring by looking at the major Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Turkey and Iran? How do you view the position they take currently regarding the entire process?

M.L.: Well first of all I think that the most responsible country right now is Turkey. And I’m hoping that Turkey will have a bigger and bigger influence in the world because Turkey has a much more balanced position. It’s one that’s not driven by old hatreds, so I think that Turkey is a very hopeful sign for the Middle East and for the world. And I hope that it becomes stronger and that it has more and more influence.

Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s unclear which direction it will go. Will it go in a direction of trying to act in a responsible way, to build a safe and peaceful Middle East? And in order to do that it’s will have to challenge the Egyptian military and the Egyptian power elites, the economic elites. Because the fundamental problem facing Egypt is that there are 80 million people there, and there’s no way to feed them all, and you have to pay attention to that as the central issue. What do dictatorships do? They say that if you’re suffering, you know why? Because some other country is screwing you over, some other country is being bad. In the Middle East, it’s Israel, Israel gets all the blame for whatever is the suffering. Wherever you go, China they blame it on Japan, Japan they blame it on China. Wherever you go, when people are not dealing with their own internal problems. So Egypt, under the Muslim Brotherhood, they have not yet made a decision, I think, about which way they are going to go. Are they going to go toward really challenging the class structure of Egyptian society and raising the wellbeing of everyone in society, which is going to require a struggle against the powerful elite interests inside Egypt? Or otherwise they can go in the other direction, namely “ok we’re not going to try to feed our poor, we’re instead going to try to buy them off by ultra-nationalism and hatred of someone else. I don’t know what is going to happen there.

Iran is a deeply problematic society because they have repressed their own internal dissent. So many Iranians were either killed or tortured, or are still in jail for opposing the regime there. Iran I think is a more dangerous society, because they don’t really respect the rights of their own minority opinions inside Iran, and people are scared there, and I think the regime itself maybe is scared of its own people. I don’t believe that Iran is going to make a nuclear war with Israel, because I think the people who run Iran want Iran to be the leading Muslim force in the world, and they know that if they start a war with Israel, if they use nuclear weapons against Israel, that will be the end of Iran, because Israel has enough nuclear weapons to erase all life in Iran for the next few hundred years. I hope Israel never has to do that. I hope it never happens that way. I believe Iran should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons just like any other country, until we eliminate all nuclear weapons, which I want to see.

I want to see a nuclear-free Middle East, but I also want to see a nuclear-free world. And the United States and other industrialized countries are hypocrites. They say “these people don’t have any right to nuclear weapons, only we do.” Well why do they have the right? Why do the United States, or Britain, or France, or China, or India, or Russia, or Pakistan? Why do they have the right to nuclear weapons? They just have them, they have the force, they have the power. But they’re hypocrites when they stand up and say “we have the right to them but you don’t have the right to them.” Why? So I want to see the elimination of all nuclear weapons. But if there are nuclear weapons, Iran has the same right to it as everyone else, and I think that Iran will never use them. Certainly not against Israel or the United States, unless they want to destroy themselves. And I don’t see any reason to believe the Iranian people, forget the Iranian people because they don’t have a democracy there, but even the elites of the Muslim world in Iran want to see Iran eliminated from the face of the world, which is what would happen if they used nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States. So I think that they have the same right as anyone else to have nuclear weapons, only I don’t think that anyone should have nuclear weapons, so I don’t think anyone has the right to use them. I think they should all be eliminated.

The United States signed that treaty that they were going to go toward elimination, but they have not. The United States has not gone toward that direction, and neither have other western countries. So we at Tikkun created an ad in the New York Times, signed by 4000 people, a full page ad saying “No Mr. Netanyahu, no Mr. Obama, no first strike on Iran.” And that’s not because we like Iran. We want the Iranian government to be overthrown by its own people, we want to see an Iranian Spring, the same way that happened in Egypt. But we don’t want the United States to be involved in that, we don’t want Israel to be involved in that. We want it to happen internally not externally.